At last she sings
by Sober Dogs Bore Me
Summary: AU. Normal Again S6 E17 . Unable to over come the psychosis induced by the demon, Buffy lets her family die but remains torn in the spaces between this world and her own. Soon she realizes that she still needs to disassociate herself completely... cont.
1. Chapter 1

**At last she sings**

**Summery: **AU. Normal Again (S6 E17). Unable to over come the psychosis induced by the demon, Buffy lets her family die but remains torn in the spaces between this world and her own. Soon she realizes that she still needs to disassociate herself completely from this world to be able to form in the real one. But there is still the matter of anchors like Cordelia, Weasley, Angel...and Faith.

* * *

This was fucked up.

There were photographs – lots of photographs – and I could almost remember the room that they had been shot in. She had taken me down there once, picked up this big dusty basket from a corner and shown me some snaps from her childhood. From her time in L.A., from her first school, her first sight of the grand canyon where she'd fallen madly in love with another sightseer who had seemed to know everything about its history. There were no pictures of him, she had said. Her parents had been too busy shouting politely and their's had been an illicit affair anyway; short for she had only seem him twice; painful, for he had asked her to run away with him, into the sunset, and she had refused.

There was a picture of this dog she sometimes fed – Dangy? Dingy? -, a mangy little brown pup whose owner was a sick girl who used to smile so widely at her when she came baring food for the pooch. They had lived a couple of lanes away, in an alley, underneath a green-blue canvas that sparkled and shone and in the sun, and made rainbows when it rained. Many years later, after the girl had been long gone and the sick pup had staggered upon the road, Buffy had wondered who'd eaten the larger share of the food she had brought. It prickled her, for some reason. Perhaps, she had told me, if she'd understood she might have brought more.

There are some things you just can't forget. Even now, so many years later, I could remember that night perfectly.

She sat leaning against me with her fingers creating deep indentations in the album; _an album_ _of her previous _life, she said. It was dark, and a bit damp and wet from freak showers. It was still a couple of days before the fall, so it wasn't unusual for her to be pressed up against me; and tonight, with my heart beating, and her soft voice pouring out like a sad song, I just let her, without reservation.

As she turned the pages (and the plastic crinkled loudly in the silence) the album moved to and fro the years. She said how useless this all seemed now; how in a couple of years, or months, or maybe even tomorrow – who knows? But soon, probably, her mother won't even be able to look at this as it would stir up too many memories. And does it even matter? Her first step, her first bite of cake, her first nonsense word – does all that even come close to measuring up to the importance of her first kill, her first apocalypse. But there were no pictures of _that._ Nobody saw us when we killed, when we saved the world; nobody but vamps, and they were dust, and all those memories that would die with us.

And then she threw it, against the wall, a slayer's throw. The spine shattered as she cried, and the pages fluttered to the damp floor, and I could see their white sheen becoming dark in patches. And she was slipping into my arms, her face wet with tears.

I didn't know what was wrong. Was she afraid of dying? I'd heard her, but I couldn't understand. Was she afraid of dying or being forgotten? And of course those pictures meant nothing; _that _I'd tried to tell her a thousand times. Nothing else mattered but the now, when we were with each other, and the then, when we were killing vamps. But I couldn't tell her that, not now, when she was like this.

So I kissed her, like I'd done once before. This chaste little thing on the forehead that made her crinkle her eyes and stop the flow. And then, just because she looked so beautiful, and I couldn't help myself, I kissed her on the lips.

It was all dark and raining, a soft patter against the glass, and she was still in my arms, still and wide-eyed, with her lips salty with tears and tasting, faintly, of rose. And then she moved, slowly, her fingers coming up against my cheek, moving it gently, and her bare shoulders moving towards me, her smaller frame coming to fit against mine, like something that belonged.

I could still remember that perfect night, the night that changed everything between us before a death sent it all to hell. I could still remember the gentle press of her lips, the dim awareness I had of her smell, the feel of her arms as the cords and cords of muscle beneath the deceptively smooth and gentle looking skin pressed me tight against her breast. It lasted all of ten minutes before the bang of the door announced her mother's arrival. But it was still –

That was then.

Now there was yellow tape and blood. The television in the recreation room had been blaring it out all day, displaying all the grisly details. That night it had seemed so comforting, and with the long twisting shadows, so ery intimate. Now it was a crime scene. You could see the blood, pools of it, bordered with thick white chalk. The whole damn place was little with it.

They were photographed all lined up straight, the little scobbies reporting for duty. And the bastards around me laughed as they displayed the torn up bunch, with their ribs wide open and their insides missing.

They said that she had eaten them perhaps, over the course of the three days that it took for them to be found from when they had died. Or perhaps she'd thrown their bits in the dispenser, creating the fountain of gore that they had seen in the kitchen. (Exhibit B). Or maybe she'd jumped upon them like a giddy child and mashed them to pulp. Who knows, they said. Does it matter?

_They _were all dead.

Dawn, Xander, Tara and that demon chick.

And maybe Red too. Since she was all missing, except an arm; and that, they said, never bode well.

They were all dead and a small part of me couldn't help but be ferociously happy that Buffy had killed them. The larger part waited for Angel to arrive, stunned.

0

It took him two weeks to get here. The look on his face was expected. The fact that half of his arm was missing was not. My first instinct was to laugh. And I did. A short barking little laugh. She'd gotten him, that was obvious. He'd tried without me, and that hurt.

After that I couldn't speak, just staring at the way the shirt hung limp after a certain point and trying to imagine how it had happened. Had Buffy made those little quips of hers as she took a bite? I knew she thought they made look far cuter than she was; a fucking cheerleader girl who could bend steel without a thought. But I'd always thought they made her seem a bit terrifying. Here she was, fighting demons who could so easily turn us, and she was laughing at them. So fucking sure of her superiority.

I always wondered why they never saw it, never questioned that hers' was not the way to fight when your life was on the line. Why you _had _to be angry and mad like I was, because those bastards killed, and they could kill you.

"Faith, are you listening?"

His voice brought me back. It was deep and gravely, as if he'd been screaming for a long, long time. And now that I noticed, I could see the marks across his neck, and on the sliver of wrist that was left exposed by the really long shirt before disappearing beneath black gloves. Fuck. What has she done to him?

"Yeah, big guy. I know."

He looked at me. Every part of him that could be covered, was.

"All you do is walk out with me. Fred'll take care of the rest."

Okay, great. Six months to parole hearing. Fuck you, Buffy.

"Five by Five."

0

They didn't know what was wrong.

She wasn't a vamp. She wasn't dead. Watchers and the covens had concluded that it wasn't any active enchantment, but it could be the remains of one that had since faded. Fred said it could be post traumatic stress disorder: _she was, after all, a resident of heaven fetched against her will. _

_O_r it could just be that slaying had driven her mad. Of course, nobody said that. It couldn't be their precious Buffy at fault, right?

We sat in the lobby watching the huge television blare out the breaking news. She was a celebrity already. A mass-murdering cheerleader with a number of violent tendencies in her past. They'd taken pictures a couple of years old and interposed them against those found on a crime screen, with the strap of the camera that had taken them tangled with the man's mangled neck.

Giles sat on a counter behind me, grey faced and discussing strategy with Angel. There were snipping rifles stacked at the corner with grenades, and at the bar with chilled glasses clasped between their fingers, the people who could use them. They were the second team that had been sent. Nobody knew how _it _had happened to the first.

I didn't really know why I was here. Pretty much nobody had said shit to me since I came. And they had fucking sniping rifles for god sake. I was good, but sitting a couple of hundred meters away with the scope tailed upon her ass was even better.

Perhaps they didn't want to kill her. But they had grenades for gods sake. And she was famous already: a mass murdering, possibly cannibalistic cheerleader. Homicide, an anchor quipped, had never looked this sexy. Even if they contained her, made her okay, she could never go back. She had nothing to go back to. But people wanting to kill her.

I needed to move. They way they were talking about her, about the traps they could set, the things they could do to incapacitate, disable, _kill... _I tried to tell myself that they didn't know her, that to them she was just a slayer, just a bitch gone bad, foaming white in the mouth, needing to be put down. But that didn't help the anger from crowding my thoughts, or my hands from twitching as I imagined—

I moved. The night outside was cool and calm and slightly windy, and it blew strands of hair against my face. She was out there. I remembered clearly what she'd told me the last time we'd met, about how I couldn't apologize, how she'd kill me if I dared. Perhaps I didn't need to. Perhaps this could be the apology that I so desperately needed to give. And perhaps, after I'd saved her, we could go back to night, and imagined what could have happened if her mother hadn't come.

It was an old fantasy and leaning the edge, I slipped smoothly into it, like a well-worn pair of leathers. But they end, these fantasies, and when this did, it left me as bewildered as I was that night, knowing only one simple fact: that I had to save her.

---------------

TBC~


	2. Waking from a shared dream

**Author's Note**: Sadly, unbeta'ed. I apologize for any grammatical error and would be well obliged if you could point them out to me.

* * *

**Waking from a shared dream**

**L**ike that one time before, it was obvious where I was the moment my eyes opened. There weren't any visual cues, really. Nothing to separate this from million of other bedrooms with rumpled sheets and smells that seemed all too familiar. The walls were a light beige and the small window inset into one was tinted black. When I wiggled my toes the carpet felt soft and real. When I strained to hear noise, it was a serene quiet, like the home I'd always wanted. But, there was always the but....

"I really got to stop dreaming of Buffy and bedrooms."

Her voice came as a shock, which really proved that this was a dream.

"Is that what it is for you?"

There was suddenly a doorway, and she was standing beneath it, in a white shirt stained almost black.

She was thin, so much thinner than t last time I'd seen her. And older. For a moment I forgot it had been three years, that she'd died and even more cruelly had been resurrected from heaven. I remembered the old Buffy, the young girl, a little older than I was now but seeming so much more innocent. With her blushes when I leaned in, and her skirts that I loved to watch as she jumped and kicked at night. I imagined them standing side by side, the younger one melting into the old, the soft skin of her face hardening, and with hunger dissolving into the angry, jutting bones.

It took me a moment to realize that the image that I had conjured up in my mind was not just pretend but an actual figure standing in the room, beside her. I figured it out just as she turned and gave it a full appraisal.

"I always knew," she said, "you watched me a bit too closely."

And then she took it's hand, holding it as if it were real, and led it to the bed. It sat, and I noticed that it left an indentation in the mattress, just like her.

"Is this how I was?"

"Weren't you?"

It is what she was, once upon I time. With just a glance I could see the thousand similarities between this and the girl who had once occupied the nighttime nooks dells of memory. The curve of the face and the body beneath them were well knows pastures to my imagination.

"No, I wasn't." Now she was sitting down too, close, way too close to it. And I almost gasped at the sudden and unexpected prick of arousal. "You've always seen what you wanted to, Faith." She look me, for a fleeting instant, and the anger and hate on her face almost drove me back. Then she turned, and her expression became impassive again, and then almost curious, a little cat with long claws.

"Hey," she said, "I'm Buffy." Her hand moved to its face, her thumb lightly tracing the jaw. "So this is what I imagined I was, huh?" I think she had forgotten that I was here. And I had no fucking desire to remind her. "Pretty." I almost laughed, choking with desire. What was the word – Narsa, Narcissistic. Was this was she was, underneath all that shine: just a bitch in love with herself?

I calmed myself down and tried to listen. It was suddenly crying now, little imaginary tears rolling down its shimmering cheeks. What the hell. It was still, completely, like a statue, and pretty as one too. And it was crying. And she was leaning in, lips puckered, tearing as well as she kissed it; once, on the forehead like we had; twice on the cheeks, with tears beneath her lips, and thrice... oh, fu-

Her hands came up and wrenched it's head from it's body. And it dissolved, the fucking thing dissolved like it were water, or mist, and cascaded down, pooling on the bed and water-falling to the floor.

It was blood. She was covered in it. It drenched her hands up to her wrists, like she had plunged them into a living body and – oh, fuck, fuck. The wall hit my side and I hadn't even realized I was trying to back away, trying to look away. She was just sitting there calmly, in my beige colored room, on the bed. Blood had splashed upon her face, upon her dress, but only over the places that had already been stained and not a stitch more. It had pooled upon the pristine sheets and was dripping to the floor, making little sounds magnified infinitely by the slayer. It was like before, like always before, and it was all repeating, again and again. Like the nightmares I had way back then. Red and white and green, and gleaming teeth all angry smiles as knives were plunged between ribs and, and...

She was beside me and I hadn't even seen her move. I felt fucked up, like I'd been beaten by large and drunken hand larger than the span of my waist. Those years rose up and swallowed me and it felt like I couldn't move. It was like they were flashing before my eyes. Like the beige was peeling away to flash gray and broken, old rot and plaster. Then back, blindingly bright, like a scream. And she was beside me, whispering or screaming in my ear, I couldn't know. I think I was too loud.

But I could still hear her, the angry whisper of her voice. "Even _you_ were all a dream." Her punch felt like a brick to the side and folded me to the floor. The walls began to dance, to move and morph, becoming gray and white and beige again as they twirled. I tried to right myself, tried to close my eyes; I tried to keep it down but couldn't help but becoming sick all over myself.

She kicked me, and for a moment everything was white and nothing registered. I just knew that I was flying.

_Even you were all a dream. _

What the fuck did she mean? I was real enough if she was fucking me up like this. The image flashed, of Buffy twisting her own neck. Of those hands against the shimmer of her own skin. Clasping it tight, _and twist_. The crack of bones. The dissolution of a body into mist and the sound it made as it fell.

Stray thoughts crowded my mind as I tried to keep the images out. Thoughts about my upcoming G.E.D's. The English degree I was trying for, and the ground in the brochure of the college I was hoping for. _Why didn't it hurt? _I'd had three cell mates and had sex with two. The first was a short brunette, large and dark, with a sharp voice and even sharper hand. The second was a red head, like Willow, whom I'd hurt so many times that... _Why wasn't it hurting... _I thought of what she said, how even I was just a dream. Had _they_ been just dreams too. Was that what she had said to them before she did whatever the fuck she did. Did she stand over them like she had with her own image, all tender and sexy, fingering their face until Xander tented and Anya screeched... or maybe, even she grew wet. Did they imagine that some sort of fantasy was being fulfilled before they died? Did Dawn?

I wanted to laugh at myself. And I did. I began to laugh and suddenly this horrible, burning, screaming pain blossomed in my chest, moving up through my throat until it tore out of my mouth, wild, like a dying fucking animal.

And she was there, her fingers digging into the flesh beneath my jaws as I screamed. And she moved her hands down, her nails scrapping the tender skin, her fingers coming to clasp around my jaw. And I couldn't see, there was like this red film over my eyes. My head was ringing, and I tried to move my hands but I didn't know if they did. I couldn't feel them. I couldn't...

_Oh god, oh god, B, stop, stop, STOP! _

Then she pressed, and even that went. And the thin film of black began to darken from the edges.

_Stop, please, Buffy... _

The red slowly dripped away and vision began to clear even as the darkness gathered. She was above me, her eyes screwed up and closed, her lips constantly muttering.

_Please, please, please... _

I think I tried to hit her. I think she flinched when they landed.

_Buffy. _

Her hair hung over her face, the golden threads growing brighter by the second. All I could see was her face and it was framed by black that was already eating away at her cheeks. I was dying. Could I die in a dream?

She was muttering, constantly muttering and I tried to hear or read what her lips said.

_You are not real. You are not real. Not real._

Black.

0

The first thing I was aware of was the fact that I was breathing. Loud, gasping, body wracking breaths.

The second thing was the noise, suddenly loud, suddenly full of prayers.

The third thing was the face that filled my sight. Black hair where it used to be red. Black, stormy eyes were it used to be...something else.

She leaned in close and whispered in a voice that pierced me to my core. "Welcome back, Faith. How was death."

------------  
TBC~


End file.
